I suppose that Election Day 2010 was about all I could ask for.  OK, Barney Frank, Barbara Boxer, and Harry Reid all survived, and the best California can do in its dysfunction is to resurrect Governor Moonbeam, but we need a few poster children as continuing reminders of the threat from the goofy left.  The bottom line here is a major repudiation of the Obama regime, a rejection unlike any in almost 80 years, and the best part for me was that we can take hope from the fact that the American people, for all their gullibility in putting these people in office in the first place, stood up and said STOP!

So now what?  First, the exhilaration is not the same for me as were the watershed elections of 1980 and 1994.  The first of these represented the culmination of the maturity of the conservative movement, beginning in the 1950′s, from a fringe, reactionary backwater to a truly competitive, policy-based governing alternative.  The second represented the consummation of the conservative revolution against the New Deal/Great Society legacy of over-reaching twentieth century liberalism.  This wave was much more a return to the norm, a recognition that the progressive binge is over, a reminder that this remains a center-right country, and that the death of conservatism predicted just two years ago by Sam Tanenhaus and James Carville was delusional.

Second, this is not the same caliber of event because the party that serves as the principle vehicle for political conservatism has been there before, has blown the opportunity before, and still suffers from critical brand damage as a result.  In the wake of George W. Bush’s re-election in January 2005 I wrote that the new governing majority must avoid the temptations of incumbency and arrogance of power and “will be short-lived if it fails to reject the sense of entitlement and perpetuation in office that are the diseases it was elected to cure”.  Well, guess what?  They couldn’t stand the prosperity, they succumbed to these vices, and paid a terrible price, along with the people they were elected to serve.  This election merely represents a temporary reprieve, and Republicans should not suffer any delusions about their anointment–they were by and large the “default” choice.

Third, I want to return to some insight from Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution on the role of conservatism in America in the 21st century.  He builds on the work of Edmund Burke in his view that the essence of modern conservatism is the balancing of the claims of tradition and liberty, or showing how liberty depends on tradition.  Further, he adds that the divisions within contemporary American conservatism–social conservatives, libertarians, and neoconservatives–arise from differences over which goods most urgently need to be preserved, to what extent, and with what role for government.  And I would add:  at what cost, both in terms of the use of scarce material  resources as well as the unintended costs in social and moral order.  As we move ahead to the enormous challenges of this exceptional experience, the need for this balance is more crucial than ever.

Recently a distinguished group of public school superintendents around the country signed off on an essay which appeared in many major newspapers.  It is an important statement of support for what must be the next phase of education reform, the management of human resources.  If you didn’t see it in your local paper, I urge you to “google” “An Education Manifesto”.  In response to it, I wrote the following, which was published in The Houston Chronicle:

“Hats off to HISD Superintendent Terry Grier and his colleagues around the country for this most timely statement of commitment to the next frontier in the standards and accountability based education reform efforts that began with the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983.  As the manifesto so accurately describes, the lead element of this frontier is almost certainly the necessary transformation in educator preparation, recruitment, licensure, assignment, compensation, assessment, and retention in order to produce a highly effective educator in every classroom.  It is the highest priority of every education reform advocacy group in America and it is the critical element in moving to postsecondary readiness for our students.  In Texas, we must move quickly to take advantage of the breakthroughs in the elevation of standards and accountability embodied in House Bill 3, adopted in 2009, by aligning educator preparation policy to accommodate the intent of this legislation. As the manifesto suggests, it’s mainly about changing adult behavior in deference to the needs of our kids, and the time is overdue.  This will require only a bare minimum of new legislation, but will necessitate bold leadership by the agencies responsible for rule-making and implementation of educator preparation policy, primarily the Texas Education Agency, the State Board for Educator Certification, and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Our organization, the Texas Institute for Education Reform (TIER), has outlined  the following summary of its key principles and policy advocacy points to guide these initiatives:

• The primary objective and organizing principle of educator preparation should be the advancement of Texas student achievement.
• Texas should fully define “teacher effectiveness” standards in terms of the personal qualities, temperament, and performance that are expected.
• Texas should transform educator preparation programs from compliance and input-based into customer-driven institutions to meet the postsecondary readiness expectations of HB 3.
• We should adopt educator preparation program accreditation assessments grounded in output and performance-based criteria, so that Texas becomes the model for value-added evaluation of such programs.
• We should emphasize rule-making that allows for the maximum prudent flexibility for school district administrators to manage their human resources.
• We should eliminate teacher retention, compensation, and assignment based on seniority and other “inputs”.

And, incidentally, we should vote for those candidates at the local school board and state level who are committed to advancing these principles.”

We are currently traveling the state conducting briefings on these and other priorities for the next legislative session beginning in January 2011.  For more information, visit our web site at www.texaseducationreform.org.

Ideas abound on what initiatives should be pursued to restore American economic prosperity.  A significant by-product of the election is that a much broader range of options will be heard and hopefully, the discrediting of sound fiscal policies that has dominated the dialogue will cease and desist.  Contrary to popular wisdom and the Democratic spin machine, the Republicans have rolled out a number of great ideas.  Unfortunately, the one that received the most media attention, the “Pledge to America”, wasn’t one of them.  It included a few good items, like the repeal of Obamacare, no tax increases, hiring freezes,  and spending rollbacks, but according to analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, the collective impact of the Pledge on overall spending and the deficit are negligible at best, and it makes no fundamental changes in entitlement spending or earmarks.  No wonder it wasn’t much of a factor in the recent elections.

As I have previously noted, the new American culture war as identified by American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks will be a major battle between free enterprise and big government, read “social democracy”,  as the central engine of prosperity.  This election has not settled that issue;  it will require at least another Presidential election and the validation of the Republican majority in the House to even begin to resolve it.

But the most important aspect of this battle must begin now, and that is to put a halt to the following notions:  (1) that the so-called “industrial policy” of government “investment” that was badly discredited in the 1970′s has any relevance; (2) that the Reagan supply-side policies of the 1980′s and the Bush tax cuts were failures;  (3) that the problem that created the recent financial meltdown was under-regulation of the markets; (4) that free trade is job-destructive and that protectionist policies are the antidote; and (5) that monetary policy that ignores America’s role in the stewardship of the world’s reserve currency and the preservation and stability of the value of the dollar can be successful.  The ideological elements of these issues must be urgently, directly, and publicly addressed if we have any hope of a recovery to meaningful economic growth.  The question is, who will frame and lead the debate?  And don’t make the mistake of assuming that these issues break along party lines; this is not Democrat vs. Republican, and both share in the mistakes that have moved us closer to European-style democratic socialism, not to mention the business leaders who have been complicit along the way in their rent-seeking.

In a poll conducted last April, the Rasmussen firm found that only 53% of Americans agreed with the proposition that capitalism was better than socialism.  I am aware of the pitfalls of such polls, but we shouldn’t take any comfort in this data point, nor in the obvious turn of the electorate over the past several months toward fiscal conservatism.  We have a lot of work to do,  and much of it involves educating opinion leadership.

Finally, we have a world leader with the courage to stand up to the failed ideology of multiculturalism, the doctrine popular mainly in the faculty lounges of Western universities that espouse the virtues of diversity, egalitarianism, and cultural relativism.  Of course, all of this is cover for anti-Western animus, particularly of the anti-American variety.  And this is not simply an academic exercise; it has real world consequences, primarily in the notion of more or less unlimited immigration policies without assimilation that threaten national identities and cultures.  So, thanks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who recently opined that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have “failed, utterly failed”, and for having the courage to relate the truth that there should be no immigration without assimilation, which begins with learning the native language.

In a much “edgier” manner, a similar message has been consistently delivered by Geert Wilders, the leader of the Freedom Party of the Netherlands, in language much more pointedly intended for the encroachment of Muslims in his country.  The issue here is whether Muslims should have special provisions, such as elements of Sharia law, enshrined in Dutch law.  The foundational doctrines for this notion are informed by the same multicultural ideology and the outcome will have impact far beyond the Netherlands.  In fact, it should occur to us that we need to begin identifying political leaders with courage similar to that of Ms. Merkel and Mr. Wilders.

Another attractive result of the recent elections is the addition of several new potential national leaders in the various state governments, particularly in the office of Governor, and the validation of policies that are worthy of emulation.  (And here, of course, I withhold judgment on California, which is so dysfunctional that even the best policy prescriptions don’t stand a chance!)  Of course, the leading model is Texas, which leads the nation for the sixth year in a row in polls of  CEOs as nurturing the best business climate, and all of the top ten in the ranking are, to no surprise, the so-called “red” states.  Why is this so important?  Because the best ideas come from what works in these “laboratories” and because the leaders who embrace these ideas have a big role in shaping public opinion on policy, not to mention electoral outcomes.  And, as people and business leaders “vote with their feet” to migrate to states in which capital is well treated, the leaders in the losing states get the message or lose their jobs.  This is the type of incentive we need to apply to the national economic growth problem.  And with congressional redistricting looming, the states with large out-migration will lose political power on a national basis, putting even more pressure on their leaders to change course.  Eventually this might even work in California!

In an instructive judicial retention election in Iowa, three state supreme court justices were recalled by voters who reacted negatively to the court’s ruling last year approving same-sex marriages, overturning a state law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.  Interestingly, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal had much different views on this result, the former condemning it as a “chilling message” to judges and the latter applauding it as a boost for the priority of the law over the personal policy preferences of judges.  The WSJ is on the right side here; social legislation should be left to legislators.